


Ride: Chapter Twenty-Three

by jouissant, pinto_round_robin



Series: Ride [23]
Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-23 13:54:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4879366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jouissant/pseuds/jouissant, https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinto_round_robin/pseuds/pinto_round_robin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four years later, Chris and Zach hit the road again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ride: Chapter Twenty-Three

**Author's Note:**

> And that's a wrap! Thank you so much to everyone who participated, commented, signal boosted, made graphics and mixes, and cheered the authors on on Tumblr. We are so thrilled at the success of the challenge. We had a blast and hope you all did too. 
> 
> -Jouissant and Medeafic

**Four years later**

“Get the lead out, Pine!” Zach calls from the front steps.

Chris casts about the house for anything forgotten. Packing always makes him panicky; he’s long past the point where he can’t just overnight something he leaves behind, or replace it altogether in a pinch. But that’s not the point, is it? 

“Passport,” he mutters. “Wallet.” 

He pats himself down: there’s his wallet, safe and secure in his back pocket. His passport is secreted away in his backpack. He won’t need it for awhile yet; he and Zach are spending a month in New York before Chris heads to Europe for his next project. But now, he and Zach have wrapped _Star Trek_ for the fourth time, and if they deserve anything, it’s a long and langorous break. 

“You know, you wouldn’t be this overwhelmed by the whole getting out of the house thing if you’d started packing earlier than an hour ago,” Zach says, having come back inside after him. 

“Shut up,” Chris says mildly. 

“Just saying,” Zach says, snaking an arm around Chris’s waist and kissing him on the temple. 

“It’s just--” Chris sighs. “You know how it is.” 

“Yeah,” says Zach. “This is home for you.” 

Just like New York’s home for Zach. Has been for years, and Chris is trying not to be bitter about the fact that that’s where they’re spending their downtime. Chris loves New York, loves the place they bought there together. But he also loves his house in Los Angeles. They shot the last half of the movie in California this go-round, and Chris has been over the moon to get to sleep in his own bed most nights. The tradeoff is that he’s always felt on duty, like he hasn’t really gotten to enjoy the place, just collapsed bone-tired into said bed at the end of the day and lather, rinse, repeat.

There’s been company, though, and that counts for something. 

He lets his head rest against Zach’s, just for a minute. “I can’t believe we’re done with another one,” he says. 

“Last one for awhile,” Zach says.

_Awhile._ Chris appreciates the qualification. Wrapping the movie has been distinctly bittersweet--they both decided to pass on signing for a fifth, though rumor has it certain of their castmates are still in talks with the studio. Thinking about _that_ brings up all kinds of uncomfortable thoughts that Chris is really not in the mood to consider right now. But they talked it over, the two of them, and now seems like as good a time as any to take a break. 

“We can pick it back up in our golden years,” Zach had joked when they decided. “Go on the convention circuit. Put the grandkids through college.” 

“Whoa, buddy,” Chris said. “Gotta have kids before you can have grandkids,” and his voice had sounded all strangled and he’d taken a really big gulp of his beer and almost assured a lack of future Pine-Quintos by choking on it and dying, which was a dramatic but effective means of changing the subject. 

_Buddy_ , Chris thinks to himself now, remembering. _What the hell was that?_

“We should go,” he says. “Get on the road. When did you get the car for?” 

But Zach doesn’t answer, just turns and walks back out the front door, leaving Chris to trail out behind him. 

As they stand outside and wait Zach gets progressively shiftier, weight moving from foot to foot, thumb playing over the surface of his phone’s screen. 

Chris asks him a series of questions, each met with silence. “Are you going to call them?” he asks first. 

Then: “What time is our flight?” 

Then: “Dude, are you ignoring me on purpose, or--” 

“Just,” Zach says, waving a hand. “Just chill, Chris, okay?” 

“I mean, I’m pretty chill,” Chris says. “Like. The chillest, except for the fact that our flight’s at six and it’s four-ten and _rush hour,_ Zach.” He’s got the feeling this is going to turn into a thing about his late-stage packing, but Zach’s eyes are still glued to the screen. 

“I know,” he says, distracted. “I think that’s why--oh!” Zach looks up from his phone and breaks into a grin. There’s the sudden sound of an engine coming up the driveway, a rich diesel splutter that frankly sounds nothing like a town car. 

“Zach?” 

Zach links their arms and nudges Chris with his shoulder. “Just wait,” he says. 

“Wait for what?” 

“You’ll see.” 

Chris has a long driveway, which is great for privacy but kind of shitty for the revelation of mysteries, which this clearly is. Finally, around the last curve trundles a battered looking truck pulling a trailer. On top of the trailer is a car. 

“What’d you do?” Chris breathes. 

It’s a red car. A very familiar red car. 

“Are you serious?” Chris says, as the truck’s driver leans on the horn in greeting. 

Zach waves. “What’s up?” he calls. “Pull around here.” 

“You know this guy?” Chris asks, dumbfounded. 

“No, it’s a total coincidence that some dude just towed a Chevy Bel Air into our driveway,” Zach says. He gives Chris a soft look. “Happy belated,” he says. 

“Oh my God. Oh my God! I knew that card was bogus. I mean, it was heartfelt, sure, but--” 

“Quit while you’re ahead, Pine,” Zach says. “And you’re welcome.” 

Chris takes Zach’s face in his hands and kisses him soundly on the lips. “Thank you. Wait, is that her? Is that--” 

Zach shakes his head. “That’d be crazy, huh? But no, I couldn’t find _the_ car. I guess they got her back to the dealer she was stolen from and he sold her. Um, _it_. But this one’s only a year off model-wise, and anyway, the stereo and stuff’s brand new. So I think it should be just as good.” 

“It’s perfect,” Chris says. “Zach, it’s _perfect.”_

Zach’s practically beaming. “So I was thinking...do you mind getting to the city a little later than we planned?” 

Chris blinks. “Seriously?” 

“The route I planned should take about a week. I mean, assuming my map skills haven’t totally atrophied,” Zach says. 

“Road trip!” Chris singsongs loudly, in a way that by rights should be totally embarrassing in light of the burly guy currently unloading the second coming of the Bel Air. Somehow it isn’t, though, and even if it was the way Zach laughs when does it would be worth it. 

***  
After the car’s unloaded and suitably feted out in the driveway, they schlep the bags back into the house. 

“This was all just an elaborate ploy to get me to pack ahead of time,” Chris says. “Admit it.”

“You got me,” Zach says, ambling into the kitchen. “You want some wine?” 

They open up a bottle and call for takeout, with the glorious excuse that they don’t have anything in the house to cook. They plate it, though, because they’re not heathens, and as they sit at the table and eat Chris reflects on the way he still feels a little hollow about tonight, a little transient. 

“Why’d you do it?” he asks. 

Zach presses his lips together, looking down at the table. He swirls the wine in his glass, a deep and fathomless red. That same red has stained his mouth fetchingly, and Chris feels a thrill that manages to cleave the warmth of the familiar to remind him that he’s still very enthusiastic about that mouth. 

Zach looks up at Chris, his expression a little raw. “For your birthday,” he says. 

“Really, though.” 

Zach sighs. “Should’ve known you couldn’t just take a grand gesture at face value,” he says. “You want to know the truth?” 

“Of course I want to know,” Chris says.

Grand gestures have a history of making Chris feel sick. This one--well, now that the thrill’s worn off a little, he’s starting to feel a little shaky about it. Not in a strictly bad way, but still. Chris moves his plate aside and reaches for Zach, fingers playing over the slope and dip of his knuckles. Touching him will help, he thinks. 

“I kept thinking about last time,” Zach says, turning his hand over so they’re palm to palm. 

“Last time?” 

“About finishing the third movie, about what a mess it was. And I know how you felt then, and I wanted--I wanted this to be different, you know? Joyous, or something. But then we had all that contract stuff come up, and I know you’re not a hundred percent, Chris, I _know_ \--” 

“Zach--” 

“I know you’d have done another one.” 

Chris makes a face. They’ve been through this. “Not without you.” 

“But--” 

“But nothing. Look, I love everyone on those movies, they’re like family to me, but you’re not--you’re not _like_ my family. It wouldn’t have been the same. You want to talk about a mess, that’s me trying to be Kirk without my Spock.” 

Zach flushes, but he keeps talking. “They could recast me.” 

Chris rolls his eyes. “Come on.” 

“I just don’t want you turning it down because of me.” 

“Well, hate to break it to you, but we were in that meeting together,” Chris says. “I said no when you did. And I had my reasons. I’ve got other stuff I want to do without having to set aside half a year at a time to come when Paramount calls.” 

Saying the words makes Chris’s palms sweaty, the workaday actor in him screaming not to look a gift horse in the mouth. But Chris has given an awful, awful lot to a job that he was never supposed to get in the first place, had a career that bemuses him even as he’s certain he’d never take it back. He wonders sometimes how things would have played were he a little less golden, a little more enigmatic. Zach’s had a better balance on the whole, and Chris has never exactly been jealous of him but if he can find a way to have that now, he wants it. 

If he’s honest, sometimes he thinks he’s still chasing that plum part opposite Clooney, slinking and smoking, a noir vision. Hell, maybe _White Jazz_ will drag itself out of the mire just as Chris lays Jim Kirk to rest. Stranger things have happened in this town. 

“I’ll miss it,” Zach says. 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah.” Zach fingers his returning eyebrows. Give it a couple of weeks and they’ll be in full flower again, like they were never gone. 

“Me too,” Chris says. 

Zach runs his thumb over the back of Chris’s hand. The touch makes Chris shiver, and he thinks there are distinct advantages to not being on a plane right now, not getting into the city too late to do anything but crash. Maybe Zach will be game to pay a visit to the Bel Air’s back seat. 

“I’m glad I don’t have to miss you,” Zach says in a small voice. 

“You never would have,” Chris says, and after everything who’d have thought he’d be the one reassuring Zach? But he’s happy to do it, his heart opening out like a parachute. He’s found, over the last four years, that he can do this for Zach when necessary, can take his weight and steward him gently down. Chris used to feel like he was the one who always needed catching. 

Zach bites his wine-stained bottom lip again. “Really?” he asks. He’s fishing, but tonight Chris doesn’t care. 

“No way,” he says. “I’m along for the ride.”


End file.
